 About 20 million years ago, the landscape of Central Washington consisted of mountains, valleys, streams and lakes. Trees, shrubs and plants flourished in a moist, temperate climate. Sequoia, oak, elm, hickory, cypress, chestnut, ginkgo and other large trees grew in profusion. Then one of the largest basaltic lava floods engulfed 63,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest. Beginning 17 million years ago and lasting for 11 million years, lava flows that were two miles thick poured from the earth. It filled the stream valleys forming dams that in turn caused lakes. Then tremendous forces deep in the earth warped the plateau in several places. An uplift of the mountainous region caused the entire plateau to tilt slightly to the south, and played an important role in the formation of the Grand Coulee Dam.
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About one million years ago, a cooling climate led to the creation of great sheets of moving ice, called glaciers. A great amount of snow covered part of the continents. As the snow depth increased, glacial ice was formed, moving into Washington, Idaho and Montana; some one mile thick. Ice dammed rivers and created lakes. The Columbia River flowed through what is now the Grand Coulee. A large lake in northwest Montana broke through the ice dam and tremendous volume of water rushed across northern Idaho and Eastern Washington, causing floods that formed two major waterfalls, both of which self-destructed. Dry Falls is the skeleton of one of the greatest waterfalls in geologic history.
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 Dry Falls is 3.5 miles wide with a drop of more than 400 feet.
By comparison, Niagara Falls is one mile wide with a drop of only 165 feet.
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COMPARE! - Dry Falls in 2013 - and Dry Falls during the Ice Age.
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Below: The two RV Gypsies
on the lookout at Dry Falls |
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Continue
viewing the two RV Gypsies' adventures in Washington in the order they
occurred - 
